July 12, 2012 It was just a mistake!!

I Cor. 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.

Sin: harmartia - offence or trespass, with the implication that one has missed the mark and thus the prize...here of eternal life, of God's blessing.

I heard him in the hallway telling someone he had made a mistake calling his wife a name and yelling at her in the presence of his children. It wasn't the time or place for me to rebuke him, but all the way down the hall I kept thinking, "It was not a mistake. It was a sin, an unloving and hurtful act committed on your wife, and by the way, teaching your children that it is OK to do, humiliate your wife - we do teach our children what is right by what we do."

In the book Speaking of Sin by Barbara Brown Taylor, the author discusses the language we use when talking about salvation related matters. In a discussion about decision-making, she talks about "moral and ethical decision-making," and has this to say, "I understood that there were immoral and unethical decisions I could make that would violate basic human values. When I substituted the word "sin," however, the stakes automatically went up. If I sinned, then the values in question were no longer human values but God's values."

I am so grateful that Christ died for my sin, that he paid my sin debt, but there is more going on here than getting a free(to me) ticket to heaven. It has to do with how I behave, how I show my appreciation for that gift. Christ suffered physical and emotional pain in my stead, the pain of separation from His Father and the weight of my sin, pain I cannot even comprehend but which caused him to sweat blood.

When I call sin, when we call sin a mistake, when we or I violate God's values, I fear we are dishonoring what He did on the cross, and we are lying to ourselves and others. Sin is a big deal!!! A mistake is a little thing that we can easily sweep under the rug, that causes us to feel little regret. Sin is much more.

It causes us to miss the blessing of God, to grieve Him, and the greatest sin, unbelief, causes us to lose eternal life.  My sin grieves God, just as the sins of any child grieves his or her parent. Today I am mindful of the gulf between the words mistake and sin, and I pray that I would be aware of my own vulnerability to rationalize away what I could so easily call a mistake.